


you still seem to have a hold on me

by amessofgaywords



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: But also a healthy dose of fluff, F/F, and a good old ghost dream, and some highly detailed plant care, but if it makes you feel better it also made me sad while i wrote it, enjoy some flower rambling, i am having the time of my life writing for these two, i sincerely apologize if this makes you sad, this time with slightly more sadness, we're back and better than ever, what can i say jamie's a nerd for plants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:54:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27407656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amessofgaywords/pseuds/amessofgaywords
Summary: Sometimes, when Jamie is lying awake while Dani sleeps, curled and tangled into her always, sometimes she thinks about it all. She thinks about time and life cycles. She thinks about moonflowers, no doubt long dead by now on the gates of Bly Manor. She thinks, ridiculously, that they must be the only ghosts left.or jamie watches over her own personal moonflower.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 11
Kudos: 128





	you still seem to have a hold on me

**Author's Note:**

> psa: spoilers for the haunting of bly manor.
> 
> hello fellows, i'm back with another bly manor fic (can you tell i really, really love this show?). i couldn't stop thinking about moonflower metaphors, and thus, this was born. please enjoy.
> 
> special thanks to an hgtv article on the growth and care of moonflowers for that niche plant knowledge, it will probably come in handy at some other point in my life too.
> 
> title from never gone by denai moore.

“New York, you said?” Jamie is staring at the departures board, squinting up at it. She’s never been in an airport. She’s never been on a plane. Dani says she wants to go to New York, and for the time being, until Dani gets tired of her maybe, but probably even then, Jamie is following Dani.

“New York.” Dani nods confidently. She’s got that _determined_ look that Jamie’s come to associate with things Dani isn’t going to back down from, no matter what. So everything, really. “But not just New York. I wanna take you everywhere. Or, everywhere I can.”

Jamie sighs, reaching for Dani’s hand. She’s been like this all day. Something hopeful, something happy, and she brings it crashing down with ghost-possession reality. It’s getting a bit tired. Is what Jamie would say if she hadn’t already admitted she was in this for the long haul. In reality, she’s already plotting ways to make Dani the happiest she’s ever been, and also, she loves seeing Dani smile, relief filling those eyes. One blue, one brown isn’t going to deter her. It couldn’t, really.

“Hey-hey, Poppins. What did I say about being somber and morbid my first time on an airplane?” The joke gets a half smile to Dani’s face, and she laughs a little, and when she meets Jamie’s eyes things feel good.

“Sorry. I was just thinking, it’s easiest to fly to New York first. Then we can get a car and drive wherever we want, you know? Settle or not settle. I don’t really care.”

“Sounds good.” Jamie’s not listening. She’s a little distracted by a chunk of blonde hair that’s fallen out of Dani’s ponytail and into her face. But it’s fine, she’ll catch up on the plane. Oh, blimey, she’s just realized she’ll have to go up in one of those. Her face falls and Dani searches her eyes for the cause.

“Are airplanes, like, a high cause of death, or not?” she asks, and Dani just laughs, pulling her toward the gate.

\---

Sometimes, when Jamie is lying awake while Dani sleeps, curled and tangled into her always, sometimes she thinks about it all. She thinks about time and life cycles. She thinks about moonflowers, no doubt long dead by now on the gates of Bly Manor. She thinks, ridiculously, that they must be the only ghosts left. But she had to go. She had her own personal moonflower to take care of, to bloom under just the right circumstances, and she wasn’t going to miss the growing season knowing it had an expiration date. She had to go, you see. And she doesn’t regret it in the slightest.

Her and Dani buy a little place in Vermont. A flower shop with an apartment right up top. Better than living above a pub, that’s for sure. They call it The Leafling and it quickly becomes Jamie’s pride and joy. Her favorite place in the world, other than Dani’s arms.

The first big thing is when Dani decides to go back to work. Or, decides not to, and then Jamie convinces her to for her own health and sanity. They’re sitting on the floor in the living room, eating Chinese takeaway with plastic forks.

“I just don’t know if it’s the best idea,” Dani is saying as she pokes at a limp piece of broccoli. Jamie watches her, lets her process. “You know, I don’t… I mean, they’re kids. They’re kids, and they latch onto people pretty quickly, especially _teachers_ like that, and if I… I just don’t know if I can risk that.” Jamie slows her chewing, waits for Dani to say something else. But she doesn’t.

“Poppins.” Dani looks up. “You’re really scared about this, aren’t you?” Dani nods, softly, quietly, sniffling, and Jamie scoots closer on the rug, pulls Dani into her. “You’ll go stir crazy without kids to watch over, you know that.”

“I can’t get involved and then… go, or what if I hurt them? I don’t know what she-” Dani’s gasp feels like a hot poker in Jamie’s heart, every shuddering sob like a cascade of broken glass. Dani’s eyes are screwed tight, buried against Jamie’s neck. Her leg is thrown over Jamie’s thighs, wrapping herself around her. Jamie’s noticed that; when Dani’s upset, she clings, she koalas, like just touching Jamie makes the ghosts go away. It didn’t that one time, but then maybe it did. Jamie’s fine with being an anchor. Or rather, a life preserver. She won’t let Dani go under.

The thing is, Jamie doesn’t want to think about limited time. Or the morbid side of things. The bloody lady in the lake can stay where she is, buried under silt and seaweed, and Jamie is perfectly content not to think about her ever again, to just hold Dani until the end of time, but she knows she’s got it a lot better than Dani does at the moment. Dani doesn’t have the liberty to forget with a centuries-old ghostie at the back of her mind, the constant fear of her running the show. Jamie knows, so Jamie stays and holds her and keeps her floating. She works with it. She follows through on a pinky promise made fast, but made right.

“Listen, Poppins. I know.” Jamie rubs at her back, soothing her after the sobs start to dissipate. “I know you feel trapped. But if you live your life like you’re trapped, you never get to find out you aren’t.” Dani snorts, somewhere between crying and laughing and sighing. Jamie lays them down on the carpet, edging them out of the way of empty fried rice containers. “Did I ever tell you about the first moonflower I ever planted?”

Dani shakes her head against Jamie’s neck. “I don’t think so.”

“She was a beauty, that one. Found her in the back of a shop on sale, owner thought she was long dead and sold her to me for cheap. Now the plant itself was a lost cause, but the seeds were good. The trick with a moonflower is, you have to stratify them. Take the seed and clip it with some nail filers, then soak it for a day or so, and you get germination in about a week.” Dani laughs. She likes when Jamie talks about plants, this she knows from prior experience. It’s the best distraction technique, really; Jamie likes to talk about plants. “Once you sow, you’ve gotta watch them carefully. Loose soil is best, and they need sun. Heat. And the first one I planted, she grew up slow. Used to being in a pot, I guess, never really had room for the roots to grow, nowhere to climb, you see. Moonflowers, they like to climb.”

Jamie sighs. Dani is still, and she thinks for a moment she might be asleep, but she isn’t. She breathes, long and low, against Jamie’s neck, a reminder. “See, she was so used to that pot, that dry, unfertilized soil, well. Her roots never took. She kept waiting for the roots to hit the clay, and she got so afraid of it she wouldn’t let them grow.” Dani hums, a distressed little sound. “And so. I didn’t watch her well enough. I came back to the gates to check and she was wilted, the blooms all dead. That’s when I learned.”

“Learned what?” Dani asks after a pause. Jamie’s smile is sly. She’s got her hooked.

“I learned that a flower like that, it’s gotta be watched. Taken care of. Some plants, the hardy ones, you leave them for days and they grow just fine. They’re not afraid of anything, you see. But the best ones are delicate, you know, and if you don’t nurture them hard enough they start to wilt on you.”

“But moonflowers only grow for one night, don’t they?” Dani asks. Jamie looks down at her, those inquisitive eyes, the pulled back lips that mean she’s thinking about something. She kisses her temple gently.

“That’s why you’ve got to love them. While they’re there. So they know that when they bloomed, they did it for someone. And they die happy.” 

Dani is quiet, for a moment, thinking it all over. “Do you really think plants have feelings?”

Of course plants have feelings, Jamie’s not even going to dignify _that_ with a response. “I was thinking. Maybe you could start substitute teaching. Just to be back in a classroom again.”

Dani sits up and runs a hand through her hair. There’s tear stains on her cheeks but they’re on their way to drying. Jamie watches her from the floor. “That’s a… that’s a good idea.”

“That way, if things don’t go south, you’ve already got a foot in the door.” Dani looks up with pursed lips. Jamie knows her well enough. “And if they do, well, then you won’t be letting anyone down.”

“Only you,” Dani says. Jamie’s breath leaves her chest, but only for a moment. A life preserver, she reminds herself. Bad job to deflate.

“I’m tough, Poppins.” That’s all they say about that for the rest of the night.

Dani does substitute teach for a little while, but eventually she finds it better, more soothing, even, to work with Jamie in The Leafling. And even though Jamie doesn’t ask why she makes that decision, she knows it isn’t about letting people down. It’s about Dani, letting her roots grow, and allowing herself to breathe.

\---

The second big thing is one year. One whole year. It’s a one year anniversary, and as Jamie is closing down the shop that night she realizes, well shit, she’s never actually had one of those before. Never had one year of anything, except maybe prison-mandated therapy, but she certainly wasn’t going to buy Tamara a cupcake for _that_. 

She stops by Dani’s favorite bakery for red velvet cupcakes, her favorite kind, before heading home. They’ve got nothing on Owen’s masterpieces, but they’re decent enough. Jamie makes it back to the apartment only a few minutes before Dani; she’s been out tutoring all day. Something that keeps her busy. Jamie likes seeing her come home with a smile on her face.

It took a bit, to be fair, to figure what _was_ their anniversary. Not the first time they kissed, since it was a bit of a rushed moment after all and ended rather poorly. Not the last night at Bly, Christ no, neither of them really want that night commemorated. Instead, they think of it as the night before. The night Jamie showed Dani her moonflowers, when they kissed and touched and Jamie watched Dani banish a ghost for the first time. She likes to think she had a hand in it. She didn’t, really. It’s all, always, been Dani.

“Hey there, baby.” Dani comes through the door with a smile on her face and a bouquet in her hands. “I plucked these up from downstairs and left the money on the counter. I know it’s weird to give a florist flowers but hey, why not, right?”

“You don’t have to pay for flowers you’re taking from our own shop,” Jamie reminds her in a chuckle against her lips. Dani shrugs innocently.

“I’m stealing our inventory, it’s the least I can do.”

Jamie puts the flowers in water. They’re roses, red and white. She likes a good rose. Dani sits down at the kitchen counter and pulls the box of cupcakes towards her, opening it and gasping, like she didn’t already know Jamie would be bringing these home.

“Wow, red velvet? My favorite!” The pure exhilaration Dani has for things still takes Jamie’s breath away sometimes. In the moments she forgets, and this jubilant zest for life fills her from fingers to toes, and she smiles so bright. That’s the Dani Jamie fell in love with. It’s the one she’s living for every day. It’s not every day that Dani does forget, but that’s Jamie’s job, isn’t it?

“I know. Picked ‘em up, figured we could do something special.” Jamie winks, and the smile that spreads over Dani’s face is slow but brilliant. “We ordering in?”

Dani scoffs. “Do bears live in the woods?” She heads for the phone, already peeling back a wrapper on a cupcake. “I’m thinking Italian. How about you?” Jamie shrugs, watching Dani smile, dial the phone for the Italian place around the corner, memorized since they order from there so often. She laughs easily with the guy who picks up the phone. She orders a veritable feast of entrees. When she turns around, Jamie is just staring at her. “What?” She questions.

“It’s you,” Jamie says simply. The corners of Dani’s lips tug down, just the slightest.

“It’s me.” Jamie knows Dani, so she knows there’s a suggested _for now_ there, but, well, fuck no. Not tonight. Not after a goddamned year of not dying, not being taken, just Dani and Jamie and the boring little life they’ve built together. Jamie doesn’t get impatient with Dani. She gets impatient with the lake-dwelling Lady rattling around in the back of her skull.

“Oi.” Jamie takes three steps forward and traps Dani against the counter. She waits, waits until Dani can look up at her, pulling into herself but not quite gone yet. “Hey. None of that tonight, Poppins. Tonight, we eat Italian and watch shitty telly, alright?”

Jamie’s thumb smoothing against Dani’s hip makes her lips quirk up despite herself. “Oh? That all we’re doing?”

“Depends,” Jamie whispers, brushing her lips against Dani’s. In the end (of course) it’s Dani who pulls her close, swallows her whole, and drags her to their bedroom. Needless to say, they’re a bit late picking up their food.

Later that night, Jamie sprawled across Dani’s lap with a book, some Audrey Hepburn movie playing. Dani turns the volume down and runs her fingers gently across Jamie’s forehead, her hairline, down the side of her face to her collarbone. Jamie sticks a bookmark in, presuming a return to their earlier activities, but Dani shakes her head.

“Don’t. Keep reading if you want.” Dani’s eyes are full. Reverential. Jamie doesn’t like to be selfish, but she likes, a little bit, when Dani looks at her like that. 

“You staring, though, makes it a wee bit hard to concentrate.” Jamie chuckles, but she doesn’t pick her book back up just yet. Dani cocks her head. She turns curious. Observing. Ruthlessly, disturbingly brilliant, this one.

“I’m memorizing you,” Dani says, and Jamie’s heart drops. This. When the reverential goes _here_ , Jamie doesn’t like it so much. When it goes to this cataloging place, where Jamie can practically see Dani stopping, absorbing, taking all the little moments and putting them away in a file cabinet for later. For the lake. She doesn’t like this. She _hates_ this. The anticipation, for something they don’t even know is coming.

“I thought I said-”

“I want to remember you this way.” Dani cuts her off, desperately. “I- I need to remember you, _us_ , this way. In case she… well, when it gets harder to remember, I want to have anchors.”

“Anchors are the last thing you need, my love.” Jamie sits up with a sigh, dragging a hand through her hair. It’s not crisis mode yet, but she can feel the mood shift, so she tangles her legs with Dani’s, gets as close as she dares without scaring her away. “You’ll remember, Dani. You won’t forget. You couldn’t.”

Dani looks like she wants to argue, but she also looks like she wants to sleep in their bed tonight. “I can’t feel her much, really.”

“That’s a good thing!” Jamie forces as much false enthusiasm into her voice as she can.

“No, no, it’s not. It’s like, between the thunder and the lightning. I know she’s getting ready. But I don’t know when. I don’t have any time to prepare. So I have to stay focused and I have to stay… here.” Dani shudders out a breath, but she’s not crying, not yet. Jamie thinks maybe Dani has given up on crying. “I don’t want to make you sad, Jamie.”

“I’m not.” She is. But this isn’t about her. “I’m worried, Dani.”

Dani turns her head back to the TV and doesn’t say anything else for the time being. Jamie thinks over the last year, looks for signs things have gotten better, gotten worse. There aren’t much of either. By the morning, Dani is back to herself, not talking about the Lady or ghosts or fear. She mentions something, offhandedly, about the next anniversary, and it makes Jamie smile so wide she thinks her face might split clean in half.

A year or five or twelve go by. Dani smiles and breathes and lives and blooms, and Jamie checks up on her. She waters the soil with date nights and late nights and little flowers left in pots on the kitchen counter, and Dani rewards her with one more day not worrying. Jamie stops thinking about the way the flowers die, after time.

\---

Jamie can tell when Dani starts seeing the reflection. It’s been a minute. She knows Dani’s roots like the back of her hand, knows when there’s gooseflesh and what it usually means.

Jamie’s never been one to willfully ignore, but she finds herself hoping for one more day more than she ever used to. She finds herself being grateful for the sun rising on Dani’s skin in the morning.

Jamie takes care of the plants. But her love, her effort, her nourishment goes into Dani. Has since Bly, always will. It’s Dani who deserves it. It’s Jamie who needs it, too. She holds Dani as close as she dares because without her, Jamie has a sneaking suspicion she’d be falling.

\---

The last thing. That night of Dani’s breakdown in the bathroom. Jamie dreams.

It doesn’t feel like one at first. She’s in the woods, walking, with a torch bobbing lightly in her hands against wet trees and piles of leaves and plants every here and there. It takes her ages to recognize the worn paths at Bly, the way the trees bend into each other, like they’ll lock you in. The way the moon shies away, shrouds the place in darkness.

Jamie comes upon the gate. The moonflower gate. She isn’t cold, but her breath fogs in front of her. She notices her hair is longer, brushing against her shoulders and down her back, and she’s wearing a shirt she distinctly remembers spilling wine on during a lively dinner with Owen and Hannah that she never quite got the stain out of. So not a dream, then. A memory. Maybe both.

Something is wrong with the moonflowers. There should be blooms here, white and splendid, reaching out to the moonlight, however faint. Instead, there are tangled roots springing up from the lightly packed earth. Dead vines and withered petals. Buds that never quite opened. The very first moonflower, the one Jamie couldn’t save.

She crouches down and brushes her fingers along the plant. It’s cool and wet to the touch, the leaves like tough, smooth skin. Yes, something is wrong with her moonflower.

“Fuck,” Jamie mutters under her breath. Back at the house, Hannah will be sweeping up, Owen will be cleaning from dinner, Dominic and Charlotte and Henry will chat in the living room while the little ones sleep. This is before India, Rebecca, before Peter Quint, before Dani and the ghosts and the Lady in the Lake. Jamie is a delinquent gardener, and her plant is dead.

She kneels right in the dirt and gets down to it. Best preserve the seeds while she can. She digs them out, the dropped futures from the dying stems, and gathers them in her hands. Small, tough, like corn kernels. Enough to plant another, to try again. Jamie goes to pocket them, but thinks better of it. She stands. Her hand closes around the seeds, opens to find them still there. Wet. Covered in dirt. Potential.

“We leave more life behind to take our place,” she’s saying, and this is a different memory. Dani sits behind her on a felled log, torch in hand, listening intently. Jamie’s been rambling for who knows how long, but once the words started, they weren’t going to stop. She won’t stop until she’s sure Dani’s seen every bit of her, until she’s sure she won’t run away. “That life refreshes and recycles and on and on it goes, and that is so much better than that life getting crushed, deep down in the dirt into a rock that will burn if it’s old enough.” She takes a deep breath. Behind her, she hears Dani stand, come closer. “So much better to see the leafling… the flower.” _The Leafling_ , she thinks. That means something to her. Something special.

Dani comes to stand beside her. Jamie’s eyes flick over, see the way Dani takes it all in. Her, the gate, the moonflowers. Reverential. She will remember this. “We leave more life behind to take our place,” Jamie says. “Like this moonflower. That’s where all its beauty lies, you know.” Dani grabs her hand. “In the mortality of the thing.”

Dani kisses her. Distantly, Jamie knows that there is more. She will follow Dani back to her room, she’ll spend the night. Tomorrow, Flora will sleepwalk, Flora will be sick, something will be wrong with Miles. Tomorrow, Dani will spend hours gagged in the attic, only to run free and into the path of a raging Lady. Tonight, they kiss.

Dream or not, Jamie is content to kiss Dani for as long as she’s able. She always is. But Dani’s lips are cold and wet from more than just the rain. Jamie shouldn’t feel cold and wet in a dream. She pulls back, just for air, and when she leans back in, Dani is not there. There are moonflower seeds, again, in Jamie’s hand.

She looks out, past the gate. Something sad and white and blue-eyed gazes back at her.

Jamie wakes up.

\---

And then, the lake.

Jamie is cold. She shivers, but she can’t be as cold as Dani.

The lake is cold, colder than Jamie expected. She wades in, braces herself against the brackish, still water. Too still. Too still for the life that’s hiding below.

Jamie doesn’t swim much, but adrenaline forces her forward in a breaststroke. When she feels the bottom go out from under her, she dives. She pictures it: the hand around her throat, the water filling her lungs, the relief of the long sink to the bottom. Not quite a drag, a lift.

_It’s you. It’s me. It’s us._

But the Lady in the Lake is Dani now.

_It’s you. It’s me. It’s us._

And Dani wouldn’t.

_It’s you. It’s me. It’s us._

Dani would never.

When Jamie feels her head go light, she surfaces. She stumbles to the shore, kneels in the muck. She stares at the water, at her reflection, and begs. There is nothing but two dark eyes, hair wet, limp and soaking, a face that’s aged a hundred years in a matter of hours. There is nothing but Jamie.

She twists her ring around her finger. She twists and twists. She thinks about throwing it in the lake. She thinks better.

_It’s you. It’s me. It’s us._

\---

When she’s less lightheaded, she remembers the dream. Something, not Dani, but something, it compels her. She walks down path, sees the overgrowth and winces despite herself. Through the woods. To the clearing, to the gate. To the moonflowers.

It’s been over a decade. The last one she planted, it was one of a few seeds to sprout from the ground and to climb. It climbed, it flourished, and long before Dani ever placed this ring on Jamie’s finger, it died. Whoever’s been watching the grounds of Bly doubtless knows nothing about this place. There should be nothing here.

White blooms sparkle on vines covering the gate at the edge of Bly Manor. In the sunlight, no less. White blooms like a white flag, like acceptance but also like purity. A message, a sign, a what-have-you. Jamie doesn’t rush forward. She stands and stares. Toes the ground with a soaked-through trainer. Stares into the moonflower she left behind.

It’s Dani’s doing, she thinks. It has to be.

\---

Dani waits all through the night, all through the morning, for Jamie to come. She hears the car up the drive, hears the splashing in the lake, the screaming, the crying. She waits.

Jamie comes down the path and around the bend and sees the moonflowers. To Dani, she looks happy. At the very least, she looks surprised. And why shouldn’t she? Broad daylight and the flower blooms. Just for her, Dani thinks. This flower would only bloom for her.

When Dani came to Bly, she was running from ghosts. Everyone was, that spring, in their own way. Dani banished them with the first press of her lips to Jamie’s and six words that, even all this time later, she still doesn’t exactly regret. 

When Dani came to Bly, she was a moonflower seed. She would be hard to grow. She would only bloom for some time. She would die before long. She didn’t know it yet, but she would. And Jamie planted her anyway.

Jamie watched. Jamie held. Jamie smiled and laughed and cried. Jamie stayed. Jamie moved to America for her, Jamie opened a flower shop with her, Jamie married her.

Dani, from the first day she set foot in Bly, was a moonflower bloom, reaching, looking for something to hold on to. And like the iron gates of the fence, Jamie came to meet her, unwavering. She let Dani hold on. And when the morning came, and Dani felt herself wither away, Jamie held the drying vines and promised not to forget her.

Dani watches Jamie. She sees her reach into her pocket, remove a note. It’s dry, despite the soaked state of Jamie’s jeans, but she knows better than to question. She unfolds it, reads, rereads the delicate ink. The last few lines, in particular. Dani’s smudgy cursive, her name, with a heart. 

_I bloomed_ , the note says.

_I bloomed, and I did it for you, and I died happy._

**Author's Note:**

> i really feel bad that all of my haunting fics so far are so sad, but i guess this is just my personal form of catharsis? anyway.
> 
> come yell at me @amessofgaywords on twitter.


End file.
